Leader of the Pack (14 page)

Cullen was trying to be understanding, but he didn’t have a lot of time. He was a bit hurt that she’d fuck him but wouldn’t trust him. “I can’t make you talk to me,” he said and the hurt came through in his tone. “But you did say that you feel safe with me.”

Aislinn nodded. She did feel safe with him. She wanted to trust him.

Cullen could see the conflict in her eyes as she stared at her hands and considered what to do. “Aislinn, I don’t even know your whole name. I can tell you that the amount of trust I had to have in you to bring you up here was pretty high. I got used to trusting my instincts some time ago. I wonder why you’re fighting yourself so hard right now. I give you my word that I won’t hurt you. You may not know it, because you’re not part of the pack, but my word is worth a great deal to me. I don’t make promises lightly.”

“Alright,” she said slowly.
I guess I have to start trusting someone sometime. God I hope he is what he seems to be,
she thought and tears almost came to her eyes. Aislinn hadn’t wanted anything this badly in a long time. She hadn’t dared to think she could have a family again, let alone a lover. She wanted this to be so much more than just a onetime thing. “The burning buildings,” Aislinn started, remembering the vision she’d had in the restaurant.

Cullen nodded encouragingly. “I need to know how you knew about that and what else you might know.”

Aislinn sighed. She figured that she might as well get it over with.
I suppose if he’s going to decide I’m not worth the effort because of my past that it would be better for it to happen sooner rather than later.
Aislinn resigned herself to the possibility of a miserable outcome and decided to just give him the whole story from the beginning. “Okay, I guess I should say that I’ve had premonitions, visions for as long as I can remember. When I was little, I was told that it was just coincidence when I dreamed about things that happened. The visions didn’t get detailed or strange until after Rafe.” Cullen’s eyes narrowed, but he sat silently, waiting for her to continue.

“In the beginning it was just vague impressions about things. My mother used to tell me that I was psychic, just like her. It always bothered my grandmother. She would tell my mother not to encourage me. They fought a lot about that.” Aislinn’s eyes glazed over and sadness over took her features. Cullen was tempted to comfort her, but he didn’t want to take the chance that she’d stop talking. “I believed that for a while, that it was a weird coincidence. Like when you’re thinking of a song and turn on the radio and it’s playing. The visions didn’t actually get strong or bad until I met Rafe. That was in college. About seven years ago. I was earning my masters in folklore.” She smiled at him wanly. “Maybe I was always headed in this direction. My thesis was on gothic lit. You know Frankenstein, Dracula, and the reality that resulted in the fiction. My mother always argued with me about my college career. She didn’t think I’d ever get a job with that kind of degree. I told her that I’d get my doctorate and teach it. I couldn’t help it. I was just drawn to that stuff.”

Cullen chuckled and grinned at her, thinking how gorgeous her eyes were. “I can only imagine what you’re thinking about me.” Aislinn blushed and he chuckled some more. “That’s not what I meant,” he said.

Aislinn cleared her throat and ignored the interruption. “I studied several dead languages as well. I can read or speak quite a few actually. Gaelic is only one of them. I figured that if I didn’t end up teaching folklore then having experience with multiple languages would get me somewhere.” She smiled at Cullen and he smiled back reassuringly, but remained silent and waited for her to continue. “Rafe was teaching one of my folklore classes. When I started taking his class was when the visions started getting scary. I didn’t connect them to him at first. They were all disjointed and vague. It was as though something was trying to warn me that I was in danger.”

She took another deep breath. “But Rafe, himself, was always very nice. Exceedingly so. He always smelled good. I don’t know what it was, but he wore some kind of cologne that made me want to breathe him in. He ran a club after class that examined and discussed antique texts. I ended up joining the club and that was when we started dating.”

Cullen shifted and his jaw tightened. “I guess I should have figured that,” he scowled without thinking.

Aislinn smiled widely and her eyes brightened. “Are you jealous,” she laughed.

Cullen nearly blushed.
Gods, how did I get so attached so quickly?
He growled. “Just concerned,” he lied and she laughed some more.

Aislinn leaned over to him and tried to kiss him.

“If you start that,” he said, “then I’ll never get to hear the end of your story.” When Aislinn’s lip shot out in a pout, Cullen couldn’t help but kiss it. “Please,” he said as he made her sit down.

Aislinn sucked on her bottom lip where he’d kissed it as she remembered where she left off. “That was a bad phase in my life. After I started dating him I found myself pulling away from family and friends that I had known all my life. My world revolved around the guy. I had no idea what I was getting into or what he was doing to me.

“After I told him about my visions, which I never should have done, he seemed to be even more interested in me. Since I was a doting girlfriend at the time, I was willing to do anything to please him or make him happy with me. He started taking me with him on weekends to a compound that he lived on. It was weird. After I got away from it I started thinking it was probably a cult.

“He referred to the compound as the Circle. When we were there the people treated him like he was God. They would do anything he told them to do. It was creepy. He told me that there used to be a council that ran the place, but he had convinced them that he would be a better leader than the council. I would nod stupidly and agree with him when he told me things like that, or when I was informed of how wonderful and brilliant he was. Each time I went there with him things got stranger. But since it happened in little pieces I just accepted it day by day. I stopped talking to my family and my friends completely. Looking back on all of it, I’m almost grateful that my separation from them happened the way it did. It’s probably what stopped him from using them against me later.

“Anyway, the first couple times I went out there with him I noticed the exotic animals around the place. Lots of them. All kinds, and weird ones too. Animals that looked like a bear had bred with a gorilla. On any given occasion when I looked at them, especially the females, their eyes would glow and swirl. None of them were in cages. They were all just wandering around. Then there was the time I was there that I walked into an orgy. Animals and humans. At the time, I was exceedingly bothered by that.” She smiled at Cullen as she put the emphasis on ‘at the time.’ “Even though it was so strange, Rafe was always able to explain it all away, and I would just accept it. Even now, there always seems to be this part of my brain that looks at things that should bother me and tells me that I haven’t seen anything yet, and if I stare at anything long enough I’ll see something unusual in it and that’s okay.”

Cullen reached out and took her hand, squeezing it as her story seemed to make her more and more uncomfortable. “I suppose I should be grateful for that. Remind me to thank him before I kill him.”

Aislinn took a deep breath. She could see it in his eyes. He was completely serious. Cullen would kill Rafe. She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or frightened. She decided to ignore it for now. She just hoped that she hadn’t traded one looney for another. “As time wore on I started having black outs. When I would go with Rafe to the Circle, I wouldn’t remember what had happened to me. I started getting scared. I didn’t like the things I saw there. I both wanted to know and still don’t want to know what was happening to me that I can’t remember. When I wasn’t around Rafe for a long period of time, I’d start to wonder why I was going along with him. But it was like every time I saw him I just accepted it all and was happy to do whatever he wanted from me. When I questioned him about what happened during some of the blackout time, he would tell me not to worry about it. He was taking care of me. I was his favorite.” She had chills at the thought.

“Finally, he decided that I should quit college and go live at the Circle. The suggestions he started making then got more and more demanding. I don’t really know when I got control of my mind again. It might have been the day that I watched him order a man put to death. He fed the man to some of the lions that he had walking around.” Cullen growled in distaste. This was the kind of thing that would keep weres and humans from ever being able to interact with each other.

Aislinn continued. “I was starting to think that I needed to get away from them, but I would lose the motivation every time I saw Rafe. I suppose I should thank Kara for giving me the incentive to get out. She was one of his favorites. She was always walking around naked and flaunting herself in front of Rafe. She hated me. She was the one who told me that he intended to get me pregnant.” Cullen growled again.

Aislinn smiled at him. She was finding his apparently jealousy amusing. “It never happened. I left. It took more than I ever imagined it would. He sends people after me, and I have to move. Any time I started to get settled somewhere the visions would come back. More and more detailed. It got to the point where I could feel him coming for me and could move on before it became too urgent. I got better at controlling the premonitions over the years. But he never stopped. It was always just a matter of how long. The longer I was away from him the more I realized about what had been happening and what he did. So I tried all the harder to keep out of his reach. Random cash jobs in shit hole places until the visions came back and then I’d run. There were pieces of it all that I learned from visions, and things that I just remembered.”

“I can tell you that Rafe can influence anyone with his mind. He seems to be able to control people, large groups of people. Mostly you have to be kinda willing to let him. So he always comes off nice at first and slowly manipulates you into trusting him. He starts by giving you things you want or treating you the way you want, whatever will get you to trust him enough to let him plant suggestions in your head. He doesn’t seem to be able to make people do things that they are drastically inclined not to do. Like if he had ever told me to kill someone, that wouldn’t have worked. I don’t think.” Aislinn seemed to look into herself at that before returning to the story. “He can get into dreams, and he’s been able to pull me out of my dreams. That’s the worst because it doesn’t matter where I am or how far, he can grab my mind and pull me to him. Sometimes I think that’s worse than him having me physically. But he doesn’t seem to be able to get into my head while I’m awake. So I try to sleep as little as I can, and usually at odd times of the day. Hence the bar jobs being my favorites. It gives him fewer opportunities to bother me. During your ceremony, while I was sleeping, he grabbed me out of my dreams and brought me to the ceremony. He was there. Watching you all and waiting to attack you.”

“How could he have been there? There’s no way a stranger like that would have gone unnoticed.” Cullen wasn’t sure if he should believe her or not. It just didn’t sound reasonable.

“I told you. He can do things to people’s minds. He could be standing right in front of you and if you’re secure enough in the fact that he should have been able to be there he’d just whisper to you that he isn’t and you’d believe it and move on.”

“Alright,” he growled under his breath. This man was sounding more and more dangerous. “You were there as well,” he prompted.

Aislinn could see him thinking about what she had said. She understood his unease. To some extent she had gotten used to the situation and was numb to the idea of Rafe. “The best way to describe it is an out of body experience. It’s like my consciousness is somewhere. No one can see me or hear me, but I can see and hear them. I can walk around and touch things but no one can feel my touch. Or at least I used to think they couldn’t.” She briefly considered that she had managed to touch the lycans’ dreams that night before continuing. “But I really don’t know much about it. It all just sort of happens to me. The impression Rafe has given me is that he’s able to do more to me because I’m like him.” Just saying it left a bad taste in her mouth. “He keeps saying that’ I’m like him.”

Cullen could read the upset on her face and he moved closer to her, ignoring the fact that he didn’t want her to stop her explanation. He squeezed the hand he was holding and put his other hand under her chin, making her look at him. “You are nothing like him,” Cullen said.

Aislinn pulled away from him. She didn’t want to discuss that topic. Cullen let her go. He didn’t want to upset her more.

Aislinn continued with a topic that she was certain would get his attention. “Rafe had set it up that Jenna was supposed to kill you. When she did then the people he’s gotten to inside your pack were going to attack the rest of you. His people would come out of hiding, and then he was supposed to take over. Obviously it didn’t work.” At the mention of people in his pack, Cullen tensed and had to remind himself to let her finish.

“Rafe also mentioned that he had given me the ‘gift of the change.’ Whatever that means. And that he would finish it when he got me back. I guess I did notice some things about myself that had changed after I left him. I was stronger and faster. I could smell things better, and my vision and hearing got better. I never understood it, but I didn’t have time to think about it, what with all the running. I don’t really know what it means or what the change is for certain. But I think I can guess that at this point. I don’t think anything would surprise me after everything I’ve seen and been through.

“My visions got stronger as well. Sometimes when I saw myself in them I would be something on all fours. I never really thought that it was anything more than a dream form of some kind. I mean, I’ve dreamt that I’m other people I know, or that I’m a shadow, or that I could fly. So why not dream that I was an animal? I never considered that the animal thing might be part of the premonition until I started to figure you out. Even then, I never really took that idea seriously. In my visions I’m on four legs, but I’ve never seen what I am. And Rafe’s statement didn’t include a description of what he’s changing me into. I never actually saw all those animals at his compound change into people or vice versa, but I don’t think that it would be a big jump to guess that they could.”